Diagnosis of developmental or congenital prosopagnosia (CP) involves self-report ofeveryday face recognition difficulties, which are corroborated with poor performance onbehavioural tests. This approach requires accurate self-evaluation. We examine the extent towhich typical adults have insight into their face recognition abilities across four studies involvingnearly 300 participants. The studies used five tests of face recognition ability: two that tap into theability to learn and recognise previously unfamiliar faces (the Cambridge Face Memory Test,CFMT, Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006 and a newly devised test based on the CFMT but where thestudy phases involve watching short movies rather than viewing static faces – the CFMT-Films) andthree that tap face matching (Benton Facial Recognition Test, BFRT, Benton, Sivan, Hamsher,Varney, & Spreen, 1983; and two recently devised sequential face matching tests). Self-reportedability was measured with the 15-item Kennerknecht et al. (2008) questionnaire; two single-itemquestions assessing face recognition ability; and a new 77-item meta-cognition questionnaire).Overall, we find that adults with typical face recognition abilities have only modest insight intotheir ability to recognise faces on behavioural tests. In a fifth study, we assess self-reported facerecognition ability in people with CP and find that some people who expect to perform poorly onbehavioural tests of face recognition do indeed perform poorly. However, it is not yet clearwhether individuals within this group of poor performers have greater levels of insight (i.e., intotheir degree of impairment) than those with more typical levels of performance.

Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Australian Research Council

Australian Research Council

Australian Research Council

Australian Research Council

Australian Research Council

European Research Council

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This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology on 23 Mar 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470218.2016.1161058

Rivolta, D., Lawson, Rebecca P. and Palermo, Romina 2016. More than just a problem with faces: Altered body perception in a group of congenital prosopagnosics. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 70 (2), pp. 276-286.